


Backlogged Messages

by bagog



Series: Old Messages [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Commander Shepard's Birthday, Depression, Destroy Ending, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 19:14:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4071433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagog/pseuds/bagog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan is back on Earth briefly for shore leave, and the messages he's ignoring have finally caught up with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backlogged Messages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VeetVoojagig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeetVoojagig/gifts).



> Continuing my series of gift-fics for people who have been awesome supporters and left me touching comments! Thank you so much, VeetVoojagig! One of the first people to comment back when I thought I would probably write one sad little story and then quit the fandom. I wanted to write you a really silly crack pairing... but instead... well... 
> 
> This is pretty angsty. I'm really sorry. I've been grieving a bunch lately and here's this thing. Really sorry. Maybe just don't bother reading it?

There was frost on the ground this morning, light enough to be sticky beneath Kaidan’s bare feet when he stepped onto the balcony. The wind was cold, it cut right through the loose lounge pants and bit at his chest where the hoodie was unzipped. The west coast had had another cold-snap last night. The dust left in the atmosphere from the war over Earth had been choking out the sun, and so the already colder than average Vancouver spring had been wrestling with winter for warmer days. Sipping a steaming mug of coffee, Kaidan couldn’t even see the atmospheric scrubbers on loan from Sur’Kesh—though effectively on loan from Tuchanka—catching the daybreak up in the stratosphere. Still, every radio commercial break played the same government commercial, insisting that “Planting will be on time in 2187!”

Since the Crucible wave fired, all the forecasts had been wrong. Since Shepard had died, they had to rewrite all the almanacs.

It took until the third swallow for Kaidan to actually notice the coffee. It was good. Fantastic coffee. Even with the shortages—the crops it was too-late to plant, staple crops taking the place of luxury items like coffee beans—the coffee was still better than the Normandy’s. Good coffee had become the routine. He wasn’t on the Normandy anymore. He wasn’t with Shepard anymore. That was the routine. It galled him to enjoy his coffee these days.

His console pinged in the office, and he padded back into the apartment. He’d received a new message: Diana Allers’ name bold in his inbox atop a long list of Diana Allers messages, only every other message ever read, none replied to. He tapped the new message.

_Major,_

_Alright, I get the picture. But a lot of times in my line of work I’ve got to pretend to be an idiot to get my story. Or a totally heartless monster. But that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I promise. I would never betray the crew of the Normandy, and I hope you would know that about me._

_So here’s the deal, I’m going to **stop by your place today** at 10am. If you really don’t want to see me, just don’t answer your door, and I’ll assume you’re off on Spectre business or something._

_But I really hope you answer._

_-Diana_

Kaidan read the message twice. He didn’t reply. Suddenly, though, his coffee tasted stale, as if it had been freeze-dried in the hold of the Normandy just this morning. Diana was the only one who never made a quip about how awful it was. She joked she was afraid any sign of complaining and Shepard would kick her off the ship. She said civilians didn’t have the right to bitch about bad coffee while embedded on a warship.

He read the message once more and downed the rest of the coffee, pouring it right past his tongue and ignoring the way it burned the back of his throat.

By the time his door buzzed at 10:03, he had showered and put on a button down shirt and a nice pair of jeans, though he couldn’t be bothered to actually put on any socks. He opened the door, and there was Diana Allers. She was in a long overcoat, but clearly dressed for a tightbeam broadcast underneath, a blue iteration of her by-now-famous Battlespace dress: blue in memory of the Alliance soldiers that lost their lives. That hadn’t been announced anywhere, but Kaidan felt like he understood show business enough to catch the symbolism. The dress was a little longer, the neckline slung a little higher.

“Major Alenko. It’s good to see you again.” She seemed surprised the door had opened at all, and Kaidan was still a little surprised he’d opened it himself.

“Diana.”

She gripped her briefcase in both hands and swayed on the threshold before raising her penciled eyebrows and burying her grimace behind pursed lips.

“You got a little time for me this morning, Major?” Kaidan stepped back from the door and gestured inside. Diana walked past with squared shoulders and surveyed the apartment with a journalist’s gaze. “Should’ve known a guy like you would have such a nice apartment, Major.”  She quickly looked down at Kaidan’s bare feet and slipped out of her high-heels, grimacing as her arches sank into the carpet.

“Can I get you some coffee?” The pot from this morning was still warm, at least, and the least Kaidan could do was offer.

“Yeah, thanks.” As he poured her a mug, he watched the way she slipped out of her coat, hesitating when she found the coat-rack full. She reached to hang it over one of Kaidan’s jackets, only to stop when she noticed it was Shepard’s hoodie on the rack. She chose another hook, covering one of Kaidan’s flannels instead. When Kaidan offered her the coffee, she took the whole mug in hand. “You know why I’m here, right?”

“Not a social visit, I assume,” Kaidan replied, turning his back and leading her into the living room.

“ANN is doing an hour-long special for Commander Shepard’s birthday, week after next.” She smoothed the seat of her dress before sitting across from Kaidan on the couch. The morning light still streaming through the sliding door highlighted her features just right: less eye-shadow than she’d worn during the war, a little more color in her lips. “I’m hosting.”

“So what can I do for you?”

“I want to interview you for the special.” She took a sip of her coffee.

“About Shepard.”

“About Shepard.”

It’s not like this was the first time Kaidan had been asked. His messenger was programmed to send inquiries about Shepard directly to the trash. Diana had gotten through the filter because she was already on Kaidan’s contact list, and she’d been trying to get him to agree for a month.

“And why would you want to talk to me?” It came out colder than Kaidan intended. Just barely.

“You won’t believe me if I just say you have the best camera presence, would you?”

“No.”

“Well then.” She sipped her coffee and fanned her hair out behind her so it draped over the back of the couch, settling in and leaning back. “Just about everyone on Shepard’s fire team has disappeared after the war. Let’s face it, I never had a chance of tracking down Dr. T’soni. Dr. Chakwas gave answers that were pretty cryptic in an inspiring kinda way when I vid-chatted her. Most of the rest of the crew are already on other assignments already. I could probably track one or two down, but…” She looked at Kaidan with an apologetic look. “None of them can answer the questions you can.”

“How’s that?”

“I want to give people the truth about Shepard. ‘A True Portrait of a Hero’, that’s the special. And you’ve got a perspective on that like nobody else.

“Is that right.” He was about to tell her to leave. Ask her to leave. It wouldn’t be fair to throw a guest out of his home. He invited her in after all. Why had he invited her in?

“Look, Kaidan,” she sat up, rubbing at a blister on her toe with the heel of the other foot, “I’m not going to drag your relationship with Shepard into the spotlight, if that’s what you’re worried about. I was on that ship, everybody knew. We were… we were all happy for two.” She raised her hand up immediately when Kaidan shifted in his chair. “And take it from me, I’ve done a lot to scoop a story, get some dirt: _nobody_ that was on that ship is going to talk about your relationship with Shepard.”

“I don’t care.” The words were out of Kaidan’s mouth before he realized it. “Tell everyone. I don’t care.” The ‘truth’ about Shepard. Maybe that’s why he’d let Allers in here this morning: you wanted to talk to somebody who knew ‘the truth’ once in a while. Someone who wasn’t doling out ignorant condolences like ‘He was truly a legend, wasn’t he?’ and ‘What a privilege to serve with him at the end!’ But the minute Kaidan chafed under that kind of talk he was reminded of the equally flaccid attempts at sympathy from the few people who knew about Shepard and him: ‘He would be proud of what you’ve accomplished’ and even ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

When Shepard died the first time, it had felt like losing a limb. This time it was like his heart had been ripped straight out of his chest. And his body kept gallivanting around the galaxy on Spectre business, making peace where he could: it was muscle memory of how to be a good man left over from when he had someone to live for. Someone that was supposed to be living for him.

Diana raised an eyebrow, placed her coffee on the table. “Well, I’m not going to be the one to report on that. I don’t feel right about getting that personal.”

“It’d be a hell of a scoop Diana,” Kaidan said sharply. “How many awards have you won already because of your interviews with Shepard during the war?”

“Seven,” she shot back with equal vigor, “I’ve won _seven_ awards because I talked my way onto the Normandy.”

“So let’s talk about it, then! Let’s put another plaque on the wall of that fancy ANN corner office! The romance of two Spectres!”

“Oh please, Kaidan!” She turned her head in disgust.

“Do you wanna know what Shepard’s favorite color was? His favorite food? Do you wanna know what we talked about in bed? Do you think the _people_ want to know?”

“No Kaidan, goddammit, I don’t! _No._ ”

“Why the hell _not?_ ”

“Because that’s not you!” She yelled. Not ‘because that’s not Shepard’ but ‘that’s not _you_ ’. “What you and Shepard shared, holy hell, Kaidan, I can’t even imagine. And I don’t want to. That was for the two of _you_ to share.” The indignation was cooling from her voice. “You don’t go on and on about your personal life like that. So just _stop_.” She brushed the dark lock that had fallen in front of her eyes.

“…I loved him, Diana. I can’t stand it that he’s gone,” Kaidan said after a long silence. The heating came on, a dull whisper of air stirring the silence of the apartment.

“I know. And no one… it’s not like people wouldn’t totally pay to hear all about that. But they’re never going to _get_ it. No matter how good a reporter I am, no matter how many times it gets splashed on the tabloid sites. Period. So call me elitist or whatever, but I’d rather tell a story people can understand. Something that’ll change them.”

“What story is that?”

“Whatever story you tell me, Major. If you consent to this interview, it’s going to be the centerpiece of the whole show. Now, if you don’t want to do it, I understand that. You probably figured out it’s no coincidence I just happen to be in Vancouver while you’re back for a week on shore leave. But I’ve got plenty of notes from my time on the Normandy—it’s not like I didn’t know I was living history.” She pushed her coffee mug across the table and set her briefcase in its place. “But I want to get your side of things, and I want to use plenty of the Battlespace fanmail I got for Shepard. It’d be a better show.”

Kaidan had to admit, she was good. Not a single ‘Shepard would have wanted it this way’ or ‘You have a responsibility to blah blah’ or any of the million things that had been swimming around in Kaidan’s brain as he lay awake at night. He could hear the words in the hum of the heating vents, the sound of construction machines downtown. When he closed his eyes, he could see the faces of his friends—alive and dead—and Shepard too, each eager to make him confess his lost love for some selfless reason or another, the words spilling out of their mouths in his own voice. His voice in Shepard’s mouth, even.

Every time it was always and only the sound of his own grief, trying to smash it’s way out from between his ribs. And there was nothing selfless about grief. And when he saw John in his dreams, the man he loved only ever spoke with Kaidan’s voice. Every joke, every loving whisper a stale echo of times past and dead, kept alive only by Kaidan’s endless rumination and self-torture.

How was he supposed to do an interview about this man? Why did his voice have to be the stale echo of Shepard’s life in the universe? How could he trust that his mind hadn’t recast every look, every insignificant phrase John had spoken into a personal love letter to Kaidan himself? He couldn’t. These people who had sent in fanmail—fanmail!—Shepard’s memory was safer in their hands than Kaidan’s.

“Fanmail, huh?” he said instead.

“Yeah. Loads of it. I still get it every day.”

“…what do I have to do?” It was time to at least pretend to be unselfish. To try to give back to the people who relied on Shepard’s memory. Even as Diana cracked open her briefcase, Kaidan wondered if he really wasn’t agreeing for himself, somehow, after all.

“Great, so I’ve got a whole roster of questions and I’ll be asking off the cuff too. You have my _word_ that any answer you deem too personal or any question you find disrespectful be stricken from the final recording. I’m not trying to get the nitty-gritty of the Shepard for this interview—I’ll leave that to the historians—I want to get the human truth the historians are gonna miss.” She spoke rapidly, and a camera-bot hovered out of the briefcase. She went on and on about how ‘the lighting in the apartment was really about as ideal as she could’ve hoped for’ and how Kaidan’s apartment ‘basically already looks like an interview set, so no worries there, and besides I pride myself in shooting in real locations.’ Kaidan stared at the camera bot while it scanned his face for the digital color correction index.

“…is it on?” He asked. Diana looked up from her omni-tool.

“Not yet. Just programming the camera movements.” She tapped a few more keys. “There. Ready?”

No. He wasn’t. He took a deep breath, and when the camera light flashed on to indicate he was being recorded, he was Major Kaidan Alenko of the Alliance Navy, Only Human Spectre. Diana seemed momentarily shocked or impressed by his sudden smile, his easy posture. But just then the camera swung around to catch her opening monologue to set-up the interview. Even with the camera facing away, he maintained the façade, and when the camera began slowly circling the two, he knew the interview proper had begun.

“…and so Major Alenko, thank you so much for sitting down with me.”

“Please, Diana, call me Kaidan. We’ve been through worse scrapes than an extra-net interview before.” He gave Diana a winsome smile, and the interview proceeded from there. By the time she had steered him through the usual warm-up questions, Kaidan legitimately felt more at ease. He made sure his posture was still relaxed, tone still at ‘parade rest.’

“Kaidan, most of us know Shepard from those big moments: we’ve all seen the snapshot of the commander in front of the memorial wall on the Citadel, there’s the vid of him at the Battle of Thessia, there’s the recording of his speech before the last leg of the Battle of London—and you were there for all of that, right?”

“Yeah. Well, Shepard liked to take his walks alone at the Citadel. But for both of those battles, mhm. I was there.”

“So _being_ there for all those media-ready moments, what—to you—is your defining moment seeing Commander Shepard during the war with the Reapers. Tough question.”

It was Shepard, surrounded by death in cracked armor, Kaidan’s blood on his gloves, glimpsed through hazy eyes. It was Shepard’s hand on his face, backlit by an energy beam. It was a final smile. It was ‘Know that I love you, always.’

“That’s not a tough question at all, actually,” Kaidan chuckled. “It’s gonna sound strange, but whenever the Normandy needed to resupply at the Citadel, Shepard would take a lot of his shore leave meeting with his officers, his crew. Getting to know them. Telling them how much they meant to him. He met me once at a little café on the Presidium. We talked about life. We talked our lives. Shepard called it a ‘sanity check.’” Kaidan and Diana shared a laugh. “ _That’s_ the Shepard I remember. Even with the fate of the galaxy in the balance, John knew that it was _people_ that were important.”

“But surely his focus should have been on the war?” Diana asked, cocking her head inquisitively as the camera panned over to her.

“He was. Fighting the Reapers wasn’t just about guns and fleets. It was about our way of life.” Kaidan smiled broadly, “Sorry, I bet you were hoping for a more exciting story!”

Diana assured him and the camera that that was exactly the sort of story she was after.

“Now, since I’ve been embedded on the Normandy, I received hundreds of letters about Commander Shepard and _to_ Commander Shepard and everything. Let me read you some of these…”

They were handpicked and saccharine. They were excellent television fodder for sure. But they were letters sent by people whose lives hadn’t been destroyed by the Reapers, letters written with the poetry of privilege rather than the naked despair of the letters left littered around Shepard’s grave. Kaidan’s face flushed with sympathy as the camera caught his reaction to each letter as it was read, nodding soberly. But, he found, he was nodding in sympathy for Diana Allers after all. How did you tell the story of John Shepard, tell the people something true and new, without exploiting those people? All that suffering?

You didn’t. And she wasn’t either. This interview would merely be the myth nearest Shepard’s own mouth.

“Major… Kaidan,” she shook her head at last, eyes glossy after the last letter she’d read, “Do you have anything you would say to the people who wrote these letters and… hundreds of others?”

Kaidan took a long time to answer. “I would say thank you. Thank you for believing in John. Not just ‘Commander Shepard’, but John. It’s important that people know that there was a man under all that armor.” A man whose shoulders sagged when he sat up in bed, startled to wakefulness when the nightmares came back. A man who ended most days stitched together by medigel and bone splints. A man who spent hours trying to get Kaidan a plush volus out of a claw game. A man you had to spoon just right so you didn’t catch his ticklish rib. “And he couldn’t have done it if he didn’t know the people he was fighting for, people like you.” He stared straight into the camera. “Commander John Shepard never saw it as his destiny to fight the Reapers. It was his duty as a soldier. It was his privilege as a man to protect people. That’s what inspires me, and I have the deepest gratitude for everyone who was inspired just like me.”

“Kaidan,” Diana said softly, “If you could say one thing to Commander Shepard right now… what would that be.”

The camera lens loomed over Diana’s shoulder, and Kaidan felt a strange giddiness inside him.

“I love you, John.”

Diana’s smile held, but her voice was lower when she said, “Let’s try that again.” The camera bot rushed back to it’s early position. “Kaidan, is you could say one thing to Commander Shepard right now… what would that be?”

“…I’d say… I tried… Shepard… I fought like hell…” he brushed a hand over his eyes, but there were no tears.

“Let’s try that again.” The camera whirred. “Kaidan, if you could say one thing to Commander Shepard right now… what would that be?”

“I’d tell him that… I miss him… that I love him. I’d say: ‘John I loved every minute—‘”

“Let’s try that again.” Camera whir. “Kaidan, if you could say one thing to Commander Shepard right now… what would that be?”

Kaidan looked at Diana’s face, a tear streaking down her full cheek to where she bit her lip. She shook her head so softly Kaidan almost didn’t notice. Again, he told himself, he had to do something selfless with all this grief. He had to try. He leaned forward, and the camera raced to stare straight into his eyes.

“I’d say, it was a good ride, Shepard. Happy birthday.” He smiled, stared a while to give Diana a chance to wipe her eyes and stow the tissue before the camera whipped around to capture  her closing comments.

The light on the camera switched off, and it sank back into Diana’s briefcase. The mask slipped from Kaidan’s face, but none of the anger rose up to take its place.

“Thank you, Major. I appreciate your trust.” She shook her head, “And I’ll be damned if you don’t have the most rock-solid presence I’ve ever seen on camera.”

“Use whatever you want from the interview.” He put special stress on the word ‘whatever,’ and Diana nodded, but her smile never reached her eyes.

“So I came for an interview, but I also wanted to give you something too.” She switched on her omni-tool and tapped a few haptic controls, “I would’ve sent it to you if you had decided you didn’t want to do the interview, but I figured I better strike while the iron was hot when you said you were willing.” Kaidan’s omni-tool chirruped, and when he opened the interface, there was a compressed folder containing thousands of files.

“…what is this, Diana?”

“Letters. All the fan-mail I got for Shepard and about Shepard and… I mean there’s a bunch from your interview back on the Normandy too.” She smirked. “Some of it… could be pretty painful to read, mothers begging Shepard to save their babies, lovers asking… asking Shepard to guide their lover to the afterlife.” She sighed. “People had some strange ideas. But mostly it’s… how people saw Shepard. Not the ones I picked out for the special. This is just, the raw records of how people saw the Commander. I thought maybe you’d like to read them.”

“…thank you.” Kaidan said, sincere this time. “I mean it. This means a lot.”

When he stood, Diana moved as if she would hug him, maybe, but instead allowed herself to be ushered to the door. She slipped back into her heals with a grimace and threw her coat over her arm. When Kaidan opened the door, she turned on the threshold.

“I sent a letter to Shepard once, too.” She looked Kaidan dead in the eyes. “I told him if I made it and he didn’t, I was going to get revenge for him. I was going to help things go back to normal. I said normal is the best revenge. And I meant it.” She touched his shoulder, and she was gone.

Kaidan closed the door to his apartment, pulled his dress-shirt over his head in a single motion, and pulled the black hoodie off the hook. With the hoodie zipped, he downloaded Shepard’s letters onto a data-pad and walked back onto the balcony, cement still cold, but the frost had burned away.

_Commander Shepard,_

_Thank you so much for what you’re doing. My daughter’s family all went to Sanctuary and my wife and I were saving money to join them. We’re devastated, we have nothing left in the world. Our grandchildren and our children died on Horizon. It means so much to us both that you were there to ensure no one else suffered like this. When I think about the Reapers, it makes my blood run cold. But to think that_ humans _could do this to other humans it makes me believe we’re not worth saving._

_I am glad you think more of our race than I do. You make me believe humans can be noble and worth saving._

_++_

_this message is 4 cmdr shepard_

_my names ethan_ _\+ my dad sed hes fighting w/u in the war. take care of my dad, i luv him and i miss him_

_  
++_

_Ms. Allers,_

_I have a story about Commander Shepard that you may wish to follow-up on. I doubt Commander Shepard remembers me, but I am a scientist whom Shepard rescued. The story is thrilling, involving many close calls and near misses, but Shepard would have a better way of saying it. For my part, Shepard saved my life and the lives of my family when everyone else would have left us for dead after working for Cerberus. I owe the Commander everything, and the people should know the true caliber of the hero leading the fight against the Reapers._

 

++

 

They went on and on like that. It would take Kaidan years to read them all. And he might. Every one of them was naïve, every one worshipped—to some degree or another—a myth.

But Kaidan hadn’t loved a myth. He’d loved a man. He’d loved him so much and for so long. But a myth is what people needed sometimes, and it gave them hope. And with hope and a fighting chance, people were making a life after the war.

Kaidan didn’t know if he could do that: believe in a myth to find the hope to move on, to beat this depression. Couldn’t even believe that Shepard would _want_ him to move on—though he knew it was the truth. Shepard would’ve wanted the world to know his sins as well as his virtues, after all. And Kaidan had spent the last hour lying to the camera, stroking the soft legend of Commander Shepard in the minds of the masses.

But Shepard had made mistakes, and he had done great things, and he had been embarrassed by the praise, and he had been ticklish across the ribs, and he had loved the taste of Normandy coffee. And he never liked winter. And he had wanted to live in the city. And he loved Kaidan.

And Kaidan loved him. For now, for _right_ now, that had to be enough.  

“Happy birthday, John. I love you.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thank you for reading to the end? Sincerely, I don't know why you did, but thank you. I'm sorry it was sad. I guess I just needed it to be sad.


End file.
